← Creative Pep Talk
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Andy J. Pizza
Real quick. Our 2025 calendars are on pre order now. You can get them@creativepeptalk.com 2025 that's 2025 the numbers the first 100 orders will receive a free original sketch randomly selected from the past 12 months of my creative practice. These calendars do usually sell out, so don't wait if you want to get your hands on them. And these are a special 10 years of creative Pep Talk edition with the greatest hits from episode art over the years. Stay pepped all year by Getting yours@creativepeptalk.com 2025. We super appreciate your orders and thank you for supporting the show. And big thanks to our great print partner Jack Prince for making this possible on the creative journey. It's easy to get lost, but don't wor worry you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. Hey, you're listening to Creative Pep Talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey. I'm your host Andy J. Pizza. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, and this show is just everything I'm learning about building and maintaining a thriving creative practice. Let's get into it. Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly. We talk a lot on this show about the idea of how creative research shows that playing with the problem is essential to innovation. Now, when I think of play, I don't think of documents and email, so if your team is often working remote, you need something more dynamic and collaborative. I think that Miro's mind maps and flow charts, where team members can edit and play in real time, has a lot more capacity for innovation in playing with the problem than traditional ways of collaborating over the Internet. Whether you work in innovation, product design, engineering, ux, agile, or it, bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary Innovation workspace and be faster. From idea to outcome. Go to miro.com to find out how. That's M I R O.com I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. And I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro. And that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's Fluid Engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out. Squarespace.com Pep talk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEP talk all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. So my 16 year old daughter is a huge fan of the band Boy Genius and don't get me wrong, I love a bunch of their songs, but it's different for her because she sees something in the band that I can't quite see. So the few times I've seen videos pop up with them on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube and they're at the Grammys or they're doing interview, I try to save those so that I can watch them with her and we can kind of bond over it. If you don't know Boy Genius, they are considered a kind of super group in the indie music scene and probably even beyond that in the music world in general. They are Grammy award winning and they're made up of three super critically acclaimed singer songwriters, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julian Baker. Now in these videos we've kind of developed a favorite in the interviews and these like little moments where they're talking and it's Julian, Julian Baker, because she is extremely vulnerable and earnest in a way that is equal parts inspiring and just hilarious. And in one video she laments that maybe she's not actually a musician, but rather a T shirt commercial. This is because with the state of music and the sales of actual music plummeting over the past two decades, plus, merch sales are how most musicians keep the lights on. Even mega pop stars often don't start building wealth until they get into fashion, which, let's just face it, that's just really fancy merch. And I don't know if anyone knows the particulars of how Kanye west went from being $53 million in debt to being valued in the billions before his whole recent public debacles and major issues, but at one point he was valued in the billions. And it was almost certainly the merch, the fashion, the Yeezys that played a huge part in keeping all of the lights on, if you know what I mean. If this is the case for most musicians, why would it trigger someone like Julian to have this type of imposter syndrome when it comes to how they make a living, how they keep going? As a musician, I have A feeling that it's a deeper issue than just the state of the music industry. When Julian says that she fears she's not a musician but a T shirt commercial. What is implied here is that you are defined by how you make money, that how you make money defines what you are as a person. And because you don't make the money on the music directly, then you must not be a musician. And how we define ourselves as artists is something that we all get hung up on from time to time. Like, am I a real artist? Am I a hobbyist? Am I high art or low art? How we define ourselves can be really debilitating and get in our head when it comes to showing up and being creative. Now, this was probably just an offhanded comment, like, I don't have any proof that this concern keeps her up at night. I don't know. But regardless, I think it's a shame. Not only because I think defining ourselves by how we make money is maybe not so good for the heart, but because I'm just sick and tired of artists being made to feel guilty about how they have to survive and how they have to get by in the world. People will work in day jobs, spending all of their life energy working for a corporation that is killing the planet, and then scrutinize artists for selling a T shirt or making a brand deal. And it's just really. It's really frustrating. And I'm just sick and tired of artists being super generous with their profits and letting everyone and their mothers take a cut of their sales. And recently I even heard that some music venues are trying to get in on the merch table action. And I just nearly flipped. Like, I like, it just made me sick. Like, the merch table is the last ditch effort musicians have at getting a chance to pay their bills doing what they love. And you want a cut of it, you know, they already sell your booze and you take a cut at the door. Like, it just feels like the same tale of artists having empathy for everybody but themselves and letting like, well, they deserve it. They work really hard that, well, I couldn't do it without them, whatever. Like, okay, yes, I'm game to pay people what they deserve when they're involved in the process. But at the same time, I'm just sick and tired of artists having to apologize for needing to eat. Now. In this video, Julian's bandmate Phoebe Bridgers doesn't seem as concerned about being a T shirt commercial as Julian is. So whereas Julian has this, like, glorious aura of being too precious and angelic for this cruel world. Like, she's. She's like a sensitive singer songwriter. Phoebe, on the other hand, comes across much more like a trickster pragmatist and seems damn good at selling merch, too. If you know of Phoebe Bridgers and you picture her in your mind, you're probably imagining her in her quintessential look, which is a black top and black pants with a white skeleton print on it. And she's wearing it on her Spotify profile and on the COVID of her album Punisher. She's wearing a fancy version on. On the red carpet. And even when she played on Saturday Night Live, she's wearing the skeleton look. Now, I'm not claiming that this is all just merch strategy, but this kind of Donnie Darko vibe doesn't just match her aesthetic and her music. It's also incredibly simple in terms of production. So it's one layer of screen printing on black garments. Now, if you make art for a living or if you have ever sold products, you know, that's just good profit margin right there. And she currently has a pair of these sweatpants, the skeleton sweatpants, in her online shop with bones printed on the front and back, and they read Phoebe Bridgers across the butt. And of course, they're sold out, baby. You know, like, people want these. So I don't know how much of this was leaning into the need to be a T shirt commercial, but either way, I just have to say bravo. In a world where beloved musicians have to struggle to get by, she seems to have had some real success in that area. And I just really praise her for that. And I'm really happy for any of my favorite musicians to figure out how to make that work in a world that's made it very difficult for them to do so. And, hey, it's also great merch. It's just really cool. It looks kind of like an X ray. And I feel like that even captures something about what defines her music, or rather, what's beyond definition about her music. Because while I don't think how she keeps the lights on define her or her as a musician, how she shines her light with her music into her audience is kind of like an X ray. It exposes something on the inside of these people that they have no other way of seeing. And that's why my daughter isn't just a casual fan like I am. She needs the merch. This merch is magic. It's like a reverse invisibility cloak that instead of concealing who you are, it Makes you more seen. That's why she loves the music. She sees something in it that I can't. She sees herself in a light that she's never seen before. And this is why it matters, that you figure out how to keep the lights on as an artist. And by the way, do you know what the X in X ray stands for? Because I figured I did. I thought I must know what that stands for. And I just forgot. Like, I started thinking about it. I was like, I can't quite put my finger on it. And if you just pause for a second, just see if you can guess. If you don't know, is it extraneous rays? Extra rays, Extemporaneous rays? Like, I couldn't think of what it was, but I was like, I have to know. It's like, such a common thing. But I looked into a little bit, and I was delighted to find out that the X stands for unknown. Like, the German scientist that discovered X rays was like, whoa, I don't even know what this crazy light spectrum is. It's wild and it's beyond words. It's indefinable. Let's call it X rays. And it got me thinking. Like, maybe part of the problem with getting so caught up with defining ourselves by how we make money isn't just that it's the wrong way to define ourselves, but rather that defining ourselves is kind of missing the whole point of being an artist. Because when an artist really hits us the way that boy genius hits my daughter, when it really cuts you to the core, if you try to define it or you try to put your finger on it, like, what about this? Is doing this thing within me the best compliment that you can have, the highest praise you have for art, is that you can't define it. It's something undefinable. And it's why we call it the X factor. Because it's unknown. It goes beyond words. It goes beyond definition. So the next time you're thinking, am I really a fine artist if I have to sell more postcards than paintings? Or am I a real artist if I have to have another job to keep the lights on? Use these thoughts as a reminder that your life is not defined by how you make a living, remember that you doing what you have to to keep the lights on so that you can keep showing up and keep shining that invisible X ray light into people's souls isn't something to be ashamed of, but proud of. And that the next time you feel yourself getting caught up with how you define yourself, remember I'M not shooting for a definition. The spot I'm after is an undefinable and indescribable thing that is appropriately marked with an X. Okay, so why do I bring all that up about T shirts and merch and boy genius? It's because we are talking about sales. Today we are doing a series on the podcast called the Journey of the True Fan. This is episode two of that series. You can go back and listen to the first episode. It is episode 473, and that's episode one of this. And the whole idea is that there are two significant parts to being a creative person. There are two distinctive parts in the creative journey. So you have the first journey, which is you discovering what you want to make the work about, developing it, figuring out what it is, and then polishing it into a end result. And then the next journey is really not your journey. It's. It mirrors the first one, but it's the journey of the true fan. It's them discovering that you exist. It's them developing a relationship with the work, and then at the end, hopefully turning into them owning a piece of what you do and supporting you financially, buying something, buying a product and making the sale in some way. And so we're doing this series and we are doing it in collaboration with Squarespace, because the way that things have evolved in the online creative space means that it's never been more important to have a hub of creativity that you own, that you can tailor to be as creative as your creative work when social media has made it so difficult to get your stuff in front of people. And I think when it comes to the journey of the true fan, having a website that does all of these things is super essential. And so I pitched this to Squarespace to see if they could sponsor this series, because I thought it was a perfect fit. They said yes, so super grateful for that. But we're talking about the journey of the true fan. And in the last episode, we talked about the three parts of that journey. And there is the discovery where they hear about you for the first time. You're on their radar. And then there is the development of trust, like learning to trust and have a deeper relationship to your work. They don't just know about you, but now they actually like your stuff. They're diving into your work. And then the final piece is the sale where they support you in some way. That's the full journey of someone becoming, going from a stranger to a true fan of your work and understanding that journey and planning for that Journey. Appropriately building your website around that journey is super effective. So if you go to my website, Annie jpizza.com it is built with this in mind to help people go from hearing about me all the way to hiring me or buying one of my books or something of that nature. And so we're talking about that three part journey. And this episode is actually going to start with the end. We're going to start with the sale and then we're going to reverse engineer a whole journey to get people there. So one thing that I've realized about this show is that a large portion of it actually falls under what I consider to be strategic creativity. When people think about creativity, I think they think about it like through the definition of creativity is starting without an end in mind, meaning kind of what John Mayer calls Ouija board creativity, where you're just messing around, playing the guitar, saying whatever comes off the top of your head, you start without knowing where it's going to go. You're not directing it, you're. You're channeling it. You're trying to make it up on the spot and just be open to see where it goes. And I think when people think about creativity, they tend to think about it through that lens. However, we have, if we apply that to all the different worlds of creativity, we see that that's really just one part of the equation. And so if you think about it, in the world of comedy, that type of creativity, that type of comedy would be improv. That would be making it up as you go, not knowing, starting without an end in mind, not trying to determine where it was going to go. However, I don't think anybody would disagree that standup comedy is the exact opposite of that and really great, that it's not just the opposite of that, but that is deeply creative in a totally different way. So instead of Ouija board, it's more like a puzzle. And a puzzle is starting with the end in mind, knowing what the thing is supposed to look like, seeing it on the box, and then making it up as you get there. And that's a strategic type of creativity. And we've seen this go awry. And TV shows that are, that they start with an amazing pilot, an amazing premise, but they're pantsing their way, they're flying by the seat of their pants, they don't know where it's going and they end up writing themselves into a corner and it ends really poorly. And we wouldn't call that extreme creativity. We would say that's, that's lacking in a type of creativity that's necessary. And so for me, personally, I'm always trying to strike a balance between the plotting and the pantsing, the improv and the planning. And I'm trying to figure out how to not just be exploratory with my creativity, but how do I actually get strategic where I can. You know, when you're writing, like a mystery novel, you start at the end with who done it, how you're gonna get there, and then you work your way back and set all the clues as you go so that you can have that surprising but inevitable ending. And so most of the things we talk about on the show are around creative practice or creative career strategy. And they are trying to work the muscle to get comfortable with this other side of creativity. That's super essential when it comes to making. Making your practice work. And so what we're going to do here is instead of going from discovery to trust to sales, we're going to start with sales. We're going to think about what is the end result, what is the end product, what is the thing that we're going to sell? And then we're going to work our way backwards into trust to say, how can we make that trust phase line up in point two, strategically to the thing we're trying to sell? And then we'll go to Discovery and make sure that the way that we get discovered by people is relevant to the way that they're going to learn to trust us, and that's relevant to the way that they're going to support us through sales. And so we compared that in the last episode just to make it clear there's an example that everyone's familiar with. The music industry has a really developed sense of this journey. And probably part of the reason is because the business world has moved so aggressively into the music sphere, that these things are really established there. And, you know, there's. There's good and bad to how that all has played out. But if you think about it through the lens of music, the discovery phase is usually singles, them being. And often those are collaborative singles so that you're getting on other people's radar. Then you have the album is the trust, where they dive deep into the deep cuts and they start getting familiar with you on a deeper level, have a deeper relationship with you. They learn to trust, like, oh, you are legit. You know what you're doing, you know how to deliver the goods. And then the next layer is the merch or the tour, and that's the sales. Now there's A bunch of different examples here. Like the Discovery, every artist has different things at their disposal. We'll get to some of that later in the Discovery episode. But, you know, one can be singles, but also could be opening for a band. There's all kinds of different ways to be creative about doing that. A big part of Discovery now is just Spotify and how you play your cards that way, but those are the three pieces. But instead of starting with Discovery, we're going to start with sales, and then we're going to reverse engineer and lay down the tracks to make sure that the way that we're getting discovered is actually relevant to the sales that we want to make. Like, it doesn't make any sense for us to do an incredible single that gets everybody to listen to us. But then the album sounds nothing like the single and the tour and the show, and the merch feels nothing like the album. Like, you don't want all of those things disconnected. You want the Phoebe Bridgers thing where you're wearing the merch on the album cover. As long as it's artistically credible the way that she's done it, you know, sometimes you don't want to go so far where the extreme version of this that kind of is unsavory and ends up ruining the art is where you see, like, the superhero movies in the 90s, where the movies were written around the toys that they were going to sell, like the Batmobile or the Batwing. Like, the whole movies built around getting as much product placement as possible so that kids will go buy the toys. That's the extreme. You can fall off this tightrope on either side. But I think if we start with sales and work our way back, we are likely to be able to plant things in the right way and make sure that it all has some level of cohesion and some level of balance. Because you could also do the opposite, where you plant this single that is so catchy, that's such an earworm that nobody wants to hear it. No one wants to hear anything else from you. You know, they don't want to dive into the album because this thing is just stuck in their head all the time. And it's so catchy that it's lacking artistry. Right. Like you want it. You got to balance these things out. But I think the best job we can do is start with sales and then work backwards. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon And Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture book makers, fine artists, musicians, and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're going to chat through our new Journey of the True Fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience, and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or andyjpizza.substack.com and I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Okay, so sales, let's talk about how to think about that, what kind of thing you want to sell, and the reason we set it up through the boy genius thing was because what you sell, I personally believe, shouldn't be determined by who you are. You know, defining who you are buy what you sell, but rather where you are in your creative journey. And I'll explain what I mean by that. But locating where you are, what you need to keep the lights on, what you need to keep going, helping determine that, can help inform what you need to be selling and how you need to be positioning that. And so we talked a bunch on this show about the thousand true fans. You probably get sick of hearing about it. It's this concept from Kevin Kelly, and it's this idea that it's just an abstract way to think about how in this day and age, you don't need to sell millions and millions of albums to keep the lights on. And the argument is you only need a thousand true fans. You need a thousand people that are willing to pay you a hundred dollars a year to support you between the album sales, the T shirts, the tour tickets, whatever. And if you get 1,000 people to do that, that's $100,000. Now, of course, there's taxes, there's other people taking cuts. There's some people can do that because they're a solo person, other people have a band. And then, you know, you have to do the math. You have to make the math math right for, for your situation. It's just a concept to help you wrap your head around what this can look like beyond just going viral or being famous or whatever it is that is really unattain, not fully in your control right now. Sometimes you could think like, okay, really? Could I get by with just a thousand true fans? Now that doesn't mean a thousand followers, like only a small subset of your following is willing to be a true fan is willing to support you at that level of sales. But it's still a much smaller number than what you might imagine, especially if you are able to be strategic and purposeful with how you fund your practice at this stage. And so sometimes when we talk about the idea of the thousand true fans, it can seem like, is that even really possible? Like for just a thousand people to kind of fund and float your whole thing? But the truth is, most people in America get by with just one super true fan, because most people, their whole livelihood is make or break on one person that was enough of a fan to hire them for their full time job. And this idea, this notion that one person or 10 people or 100 people or a thousand people could be completely make or break for your career is very based in reality. And figuring out where you are on that journey can help determine what you need to sell to get by. And so if you're in a place where you have no true fans, no prospects, that might mean that you're currently in a place where you need one super mega true fan, AKA an employer, to make sure that you can keep the lights on. And there's no shame in that. Like everybody, most people have to start there. I did. Most people do. Some people have to go off and on. There's no shame in how you have to keep the lights on, how you have to keep yourself funded so that you can do those creative things. We all need to eat, we all need to take care of our families and take care of business. What I want you to do with this stage is to think about how many true fans are you at right now and how many true fans are you able to get in the near future, in the next year with this next creative project? And so you might be one true fan. You might be at a place where you're at 10 True Fans. And 10 True Fans mean you've got 10 clients. That's another name for this level of fan. 10 True Clients which are willing to pay you $10,000 each for these different projects. You might be at a place where you have 100 true fans that are willing to pay you $1,000 each in commissions, or you might be at a place where you're at thousand true fans that will pay $100 now just to get really specific about what this could look like. If you are a chef, that might look like being a chef in a restaurant, your one true fan is your employer. The next level might be catering. The next level might be food truck. The next level after that might be having a full blown restaurant. And then even after a restaurant it might be like licensing products or selling your secret sauce out of the restaurant or whatever. You can keep scaling from there, but you have to be aware of where am I at within that journey? It's easy to want to skip to the place where you're scaling and you're selling hundreds of thousands of products, but most people's journeys don't go that way. And so if you're a musician, this one's trickier because finding a full time job as a musician might not be in the cards. It might be impossible for you to have one true fan, but some people do it. Some people are employed in making music for TV work, you know, writing songs in that way. But the next level might be something like being an opener for a band. And that, that again, that's only one true fan. You only have to have one band. Think you are the cat's knees, pajamas, the bee's knees and the pajamas, they kind of got mixed up. Bees, knees, cats, pajamas. You only need one band that thinks you are the literal greatest and they want to get the word out, that's your one employer. The next level might be licensing and syncing your music. The next level down might be then touring and selling merch. Now if you are a comedian, it could look like at first your one true fan is you write for a show, you're in the writer's room. And then the next level down might be freelance writer and you're writing for a few different shows and working on a few different scripts for different people. And then the next one down might be you're doing corporate gigs where they're paying you a larger sum of money than you can command in the club. And the next one down might be a touring comedian where you're actually scaling it out and you're doing the merch. If you're an illustrator or a designer, it could look like in house or agency, then you're moving down to retainers and repeat clients. And then you're moving down to just clients. And then you're moving down to talks, workshops, books and so on and so forth. But you can see how in every different area there are ways to map where are you right now in the journey. Are you in a place where you're lucky if you get one true fan. Are you in a place where you could work towards getting 10? Are you in a place where you could figure out a way to get 100 or even up to a thousand and beyond? And the cool thing is about doing it this way, this kind of grassroots way, building it organically, bootstrapping this thing. The cool thing about that is a fully formed business isn't ever a thousand true fans for $100,000. It's if you work your way through, you're going to Frankenstein and piecemeal this thing together so that when you're at the height of what you're doing, you're not just selling products, you're not just having clients, you're not just having retainers. You're doing a mix of these. And you have options to build it the way that you want to build it. If you don't ever want to do corporate gigs, you don't have to, or if you really like doing that, you can do less tour, like that's the ideal. And you can build something from, you know, that goes beyond that bottom layer of what you need to survive. But knowing which of these you're in right now can help you figure out what kind of website you need to build to build the trust, what kind of project you need to focus on next, and what kind of places you need to go to be discovered by the right people. That's why having this strategic mindset, that's why starting with this is what I need to focus on selling today, to keep the lights on, is so powerful, because then you can go build all those other pieces purposefully to point the right direction. Because if you're looking for clients, it doesn't make sense for you to spend all of your time in the discovery phase trying to get people on TikTok to follow you, because the clients aren't there. Most of the people that are going to hire you are in their 40s and 50s, and they're not there. And you see. So you can see how knowing what you're trying to sell and being purposeful with that in the way that you design your website or your presence online is really, really powerful. Okay? So in this show, at the end, we try to give you a cta, and it's not just a call to action, it's better than that. It's a creative call to adventure. And it's how you put this stuff to action right now so that it's not just cool idea that makes you feel inspired, but it really makes A difference in what you're doing. And so the CTA this week is called Push Button, and I'm gonna explain what that is. So when I was in high school, I worked at a movie theater. And it took me a long time, but eventually I worked my way up to shift manager somehow, mostly because I think the bosses liked me and pitied me and knew that I needed a change or I was gonna have to walk out of there. And so eventually they let me build movies. And back then, we had film, and you had to, like, splice it all together, and you had to run it through this kind of ancient projector. And it took a lot of training to figure this out. And then you could preview these movies. You got to watch them super late at night and see them before they even came out. Like, I saw the Matrix Reloaded way before anybody else, so I'm still bragging about that. I saw Harold and Kumar really late, and then we went to White Castle. Yeah, a lot of really, really great stories from that time. But one time, I'm getting trained on how to do this, and I must have been. I really was, like, trying to skip to the end, and I must have said it a hundred times like, oh, and then you push the button. Am I. The guy that was training me was like, andy, no. Like, I know that button on the projector is glowing and it looks really fun to press, but you need to just listen to each part. Quit saying push button. Do I just put this. Is that where I push the button? And he started teasing me about that forever and would just tease me. But I want you to think about your website like that. I want you to think about your website as if it was one big button that was irresistible, that was calling in the right person, the person that you're trying to sell to. If it could only achieve one thing when that button got pressed, what would that function be? If it only could sell books, if it could only sell albums, if it could only sell tour tickets or merch. If it could only, you know, give you a client job. If it could only get you one true fan as getting hired by an employer. If your. Your website can achieve multiple things, that's totally fine, but hopefully it all comes together and it has a hierarchy where you have a purpose, where you're like, if the. If this website can only do one thing, what could it be? How can you make it that irres. Irresistible projector button where they're just like, put push button now. Now it's time to push the button. Like, make Your website that purposeful. And so if you're in a place where you're in the 1 to 10 range trying to get jobs or trying to get a client, it might be a portfolio. That is a button that, when it's pressed, gives you a job. If you're in the 10, 200 range, it might be a button that books you as an opener for a band or gives you a commission as an artist. If you're in the hundred to a thousand range, it might be to sell a particular product. Now, like I said, your website can do a few different things. Mine does. But I did have a very specific purpose with how I built it. When people discovered me and they went to my website and they're developing trust, which I think the website's main purpose is the trust. And then ultimately that. But and pushing for the sale. It does a really good job of doing the trust thing, telling people who you are, giving them signs that you're legitimate in what you do, and then leading to this button. But the first thing you have to decide is what is the button? What is the purpose? If you can determine just one major thing, the top priority that you can do with this website, you can then build everything around building trust to pushing that button. Now, in the next episode of this series, we'll talk about the trust element. But for now, all I want you to do is think about where are you at in terms of that journey of growing true fans? Are you in the 1 10,000,000 range? Wherever you are will help determine the kind of button that this website needs to be. And then I want you to decide what does that button need to do when it's pressed? It might be an email button that's emailing you a job. It's kind of a metaphorical button, but it can literally be a button in the top right hand corner that says email me for a commission or click this to go into the shop, or click this to buy tickets for the event, whatever it is. But if it was just one button, what would it. That's all you got to do. Like I said earlier in this episode, this journey of the True Fan series is sponsored proudly by Squarespace. I love Squarespace. I love what I was able to achieve in my own website. And I built the whole thing around this idea of the journey of the true fan. And I just. I love the way that it works. Love the fluid engine that means I can move things anywhere and create something really custom without having any knowledge of code. If you want to start making that button, if you Want to start making that website and working on it? You can get started for free@squarespace.com pep talk and you can build your site and when you're ready to go live and launch it, you can get 10% off your first purchase with Squarespace by using promo code Pep Talk. And if you are thinking about using Squarespace, go to that link squarespace.com Pep Talk use that link because it helps the show as well. We love working with them. They do great stuff for creative people and I hope that you go check it out. Each episode of Creative Pep Talk is is designed to help you maintain a consistent creative practice. If you're trying to transform your creativity from an infrequent hobby into a real discipline, sign up to our newsletter@andyjpizza.substack.com so that you never miss an episode. Creative Pep Talk is part of the Podglomerate Network. You can learn more@podglomerate.com Massive thanks to my team, Sophie Miller for content editing and co writing, to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for editing and sound design. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until next time, stay pepped up. Hey y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new Fluid engine, and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately, and if you want to check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out andyjpizza.com if you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com pep talk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code pep talk for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. I did consider Barney a friend, and he's still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. You know I love you, you love me. I call it the Purple Mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man. Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.